I was today at the cafe of the La Central bookshop in Madrid, and seeing people go by, probably looking for Kings gifts (Spanish equivalent to Santa), I thought it was a bit like this blog: I see you readers pass, some even stop for a chat, or leave a nice comment. Thanks for reading durin 2012, I’ll try to make it better in 2013,
Happy new year!
In red, swiss municipalities in which the ratio non permanent dwellings- total dwellings is presumed to be over 20%
Non permanent homes, also known as “cold beds” (as they have no users but for some weeks around the year) is often a concern for planners in tourism receiving countries. Planning theorists agree on the costs to maintain urban tissues seldom used most of the time, and on the environmental costs of such land uses.
On march 11, 2012, Swiss voted on referendum (50,6 yes), among other measures, to limit non permanent homes to 20% on each municipality. The Federal Bylaw of august 22, 2012 establishes the rules to apply this decission. The bylaw defines:
Some interesting points:
The 
The Puerta del Sol symbolizes for Madrid the center as a meeting point. Many subway lines converge there, and there is a large retail concentration, so these days people flock there for a stroll and (a few) for shopping. It is also the place to receive the new year, as Times square is in New York; in the photo under this lines, to the left you will see the clock to whose bell spaniards swallow 12 grapes when the new year arrives (one of these deliciously absurd traditions that, in the end, define a country through the memories of its people).
Happy Christmas!
Ponte Vecchio, on the Arno.
Some centuries ago urban bridges where, at least in Europe, just streets that had to be built over water, lined by buildings, with no water in sight. This has changed, but Ponte Vecchio in Florence is just still this. It combines a long corridor between palaces on one side with more organic buildings on the other side. It is full of shops for tourists, but it is, as the whole city, worth the trip…
The inner street of Ponte Vecchio
The Vasari Corridor, a structural element
Urban retail as a complement to the Vasari Corridor
A view from the opposite side, with the square in the center of the bridge clearly visible
A part of the itinerary between the rail station and Saint Mark square
While I lived in Belgium I met an italian architecture student from Verona; he had made his precedent studies in the Venice architecture school. Each time he told anyone about that, people mused “oh, Venice, what a beautiful city, to get lost and wander through its small streets and canals…!”, so he replied “so, you know, in fact it is easy to get lost in Venice, and it is not that wonderful when you are coming home at night with your groceries…”
Saying that Venice is an urban singularity is just self evident. What is not so visible as a tourist are those everyday problems residents find… There are no many streets, but canals –> so there are few street level spaces for shops, and they are scarce but for a reduced number of paths. Those throughfares are used by a hughe mass of fourists, whose purchasing power displaces such minor things as locals trying to buy their tomatoes. I don’t know if things have changed, but not long ago common supermarkets where nearly impossible to find, and street markets where nearly the only way to get your food. For apparel and any other thing that a tourist could buy, prices where far from competitive with mainland shops.
The city is, no doubt, worth the trip; I visited in january 2007 and it was wonderful. But if I had to live in Venice, the choice would be hard between living on the islands or on the mainland (the islands are so interesting…)
The inner street on Rialto Bridge. Many tourist shops, but they won’t let you see the Grand Canal…
The external façade of the Rialto Bridge
The arcades of Saint Mark’s square
Saint Mark’s square, far from being a uniform space, is interesting due to the variety of the buildings on it
What is a center that has been razed? an urban problem. Alexanderplatz in Berlin was destroyed during WWII, and its rebuilding under the DDR produced a typical 1960s space which was quite far from a historic reconstruction. It is a very open space, but the buildings are not always up to the task (Mediamarkt has made a terrible work…). Some have decided to become more introvert, as Galleria Kaufhaus, a department store. Just to remind you where you are, as in any border area you have signs in the shop in the neighboring language… which here is, as an exotic element for a spaniard, polish…
Galleria Kaufhof on AlexanderPlatz (red color is not the real one…)
The dome over the central space of the department store
The escalators under the central dome
A bakery in the hyperdense city.
As I had already said some posts ago, the time allocated to the act of buying each good is a relevant figure. It is not only the time that you use, but also how often you do it. For a reason or another, you will not buy a wedding ring each month, or a car each quarter, or a paper notebook each week… This leads us to a relevant distinction among shops, according to the frequency by which you buy their goods: frequent buys (bakery, news agents, food in general) and non frequent buys (apparel, personal equipment, luxury, furniture…)
At least in Europe, and certainly in this dense city of La Coruña, this last category of unfrequent use shops is the key to retail centralities. You buy your bread on the way back home, but on saturday you flock to see the shops looking for that product you think long time about…
Jewelers
Jewelers are concentrated on the isthmus, and specially in Calle Real, the historical grand commercial street. Their pressence in the rest of the city is not a concentrated
Apparel shops
Three hotspots appear for apparel stores: Calle real again, a more recent centrality in the ronda de Outeiro to the southwest (Calle Barcelona, an open commercial center around a pedestrianised street), and the densest spot in the El Corte Inglés department store and its surroundings.
Supermarkets
Supermarkets are scatered along the city, but here only the largest ones appear.
Butchers
Butchers are scatered following density. In the historical areas of the isthmus, they are less representative as they are often displaced by other retail uses.
Pharmacies
Pharmacies are a higly regulated activity, location included. They are scatered across the city, as it corresponds to a frequent use item.
Bookshops
Bookshops include here also your neighborhood newsagent. Nevertheless, big bookshops in the central areas are apparent.
Urban retail follows similar logics in cities, even if they are not multimillion metro areas. I will talk now about the city I have lived in for 30 years. Coruña, in northwestern Spain, is the second most densely populated municipality in Spain; with sligthly less than 250.000, it is the center of a metro area of about half a million people, has a busy harbor oriented towards oil, and in the next municipality to the west are the world headquarters of Zara, the apparel merchant, whose first shop was here (I happened to pass by as a kid, not suspecting it would become such a world company…)
Just in order to give an impression of how dense the city fabric is, in what many would not identify as Spain, as the landscape is closer to that of Britanny, for instance, two views. The historical city is on a narrow penninsula that creates a safe bay, the reason for the city location.
Zone B on map, isthmus and the old city (hidden by the high buildings on the beach), as seen from A
Zone C on the map, Ronda de Outeiro, as seen from A. The high densities of the 1960s and 1970s, continued today
The maps in this post are based on the cadastre databases, as manipulated in an open source GIS. This source offers the advantage of giving areas for the different land uses, to a large degree of detail; they also have two problems: they indicate someone is paying land taxes for the different housing units and other uses inside each building (a relevant feature in a country in which multistorey buildings are a normal feature in cities), but not if the space is being really used for that specific purpose, as the case for vacant shops, and they can have, as in any database of such size, some errors. The maps show densities, so sometimes a white value does not mean the lack of the feature, but the lack of weight as compared to other zones.
Anyway, what those maps show is that even in an extremely dense city there is no mathematic correlation between global density and shops density. The values are somehow biassed by the lack of habit in this particular city to have the ground floor used for housing, as generally it is sold for shops (they are theoretically viable with such a number of potential clients around), but there are clear commercial centralities (which will be shown in tomorrow’s post).
Number of housing units per lot
The density of housing units is quite high, but specially southwest of the central city, in the Ronda de Outeiro area, and in the growth areas from the 1960s/ 1970s (even today, densities are extremely high by normal spanish standards)
Retail surface by building lot
The retail surface by building lots map shows that you have a light hue (small surface shops) “banana” in the isthmus, and a set of large “dots” corresponding to peripheral commercial centers and big box retail.
Built up area by lot
The built up area by lot map is similar to the housing density map, as most uses in the represented area are residential.
Number of retail establishments by lot
The distribution of the number of retail establishments by lot is similar to the distribution of retail surfaces, with a clrea difference: the large peripheral centers have either a more reduced number of cadastral units (they can be on rent, with the same owner) or there can be a delay in their introduction in the database for the more recent.
Azca, a large offices complex in northern Madrid with all the flaws of the “slab” planning of the 60s
Puerta del Sol and its environs
Two central nodes of the Madrid metropolitan area, with a sizeable role in terms of image: the old city and a 1960s bussiness district. In 2006 the Puerta del Sol had some 6.000 residents, 24.000 employments and 2.455 bussinesses, retail activities meaning 27% of the employment; in 2010 the total employment had decreased slightly, and retail employment meant just 23% of it. In 2006 AZCA had 1.226 residents and 49.353 employments, 11% of which where in retail; in 2010 the jobs number had decreased, overall and in retail, more sharply than at Sol,but retail jobs had risen to 13% of the whole.
During that time the number of jobs in the region had risen less than 1%, but retail jobs fell slightly. Nevertheless, these two spaces keep a role as metropolitan centralities, in which retail is relevant, but no the only function.
The Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (a city agency) is making a periodical census of retail establishments in the city since 2000, that allow not only to follow the progression in number but also in specialities and conditions. The last one was realised in april 2011 and published in 2000, with the collaboration of the Chamber of Commerce.
Paris had in 2011 some 84.000 establishments in ground floors, 61.232 being active shops. The number of shops has gone down some 900 since 2007, but this is also aproximately the number of shops that have been enlarged through anexations. The gross leasable area is estimated at some 4 million sq m, with a vacancy rate of 9,6% in 2011.
The study identifies 15 atractive nodes at city level, and a rich retail structure going from large department stores to small specality shops. One of the most interesting features is a graph of ups and downs by speciality, with, for instance, jewelers diminishing and motorbike sellers on the rise.
Having studied the urban implications of retail for some Spanish cities, I can tell that this is a good study on the isue, as it explains well a relevant issue: the continuous evolution of the retail sector, that requires flexibility in rules that, on the other side, must guarantee a good relation with other land uses, configuring a complex problem to be solved by good urban regulations.
metrhispanic 